The 2017-18 competitive season is officially underway now that we have received word of the first-ever Dota 2 minor under the newly revamped system.

StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3

Everything about StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 seems to be in full accordance with Valve’s guidelines for the 2017-18 season.

The tournament will have a prize pool of $300,000 and will have open and closed qualifiers for all the six major regions: Europe, CIS, North America, South America and Southeast Asia. Finally, joining the 6 qualifiers in the LAN finals will be 2 direct invites for a total of 8 participating teams.

The LAN finals of the event will run from October 12 to October 15 and will be held in Kiev at the historic CyberSport Arena.

In case you missed it, the 2017-18 season will see some major changes to how the direct invite to TI works. Instead of a “secret” process, Valve will now use a new system where players whose teams place well in Minors and Majors will receive Qualifying Points. The teams who finish the end of the season with the highest QP will then be the ones who will receive direct invites to TI8.

StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 will be our first chance of seeing the said point system in action. Additionally, we might finally see Valve release the leaderboards promised earlier in July real soon.

2017-18 Competitive Season Officially Underway

With competitive Dota 2 hitting a bit of a lul period following the conclusion of The International 7 and with a post TI7 roster shuffle that lacked “drama”, especially when compared to last year’s, the announcement of StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 finally gives starved fans something to look forward to in the weeks ahead.

And, because the Dota 2 minor will take place just a week before the a Minor (October 19, PGL Minor) and two weeks before a Major (ESL Hamburg 2017, October 26) we’ll likely see the qualifiers for all three tournaments overlap. It’ll be interesting to see how teams will adjust to this and how they choose which events they will try to qualify for.